Wilson FG Tour M3 Fairway Wood Review

The Wilson FG Tour M3 fairway wood is aimed at the 'Feel Golfer', which is where the initials come from and the club certainly fits into that better player category well.

The head is compact without being too small, so most single figure players should be comfortable with it thanks to the design input from Padraig Harrington and Paul Lawrie. The styling is classy with a dark, matt grey head and a black face so that they blend a little, which is common in adjustable clubs to hide the change in face angle.

The Wilson Staff Multi Fit System is key to this fairway, as the FG Tour is their first first range of adjustable woods. There are two aspects to the adjustability that allow you to change the loft and weight.

Firstly the loft can be changed across a range of 3 degrees in half degree or 1 degree increments. So the 15° fairway can be 14, 14.5, 15, 16, 16.5 or 17 degrees. The six settings are controlled using the now standard adjustable hosel screw and whilst it is easy to use, the hosel itself looks quite bulky compared to others in the market.

When you change loft using these types of hosels you are actually opening and closing the face and as a result the lie changes slightly too. There is no lie adjustment on the FG M3 fairway and going down from the standard 15° 3-wood to 14° made the face seem more open than most. Even at the standard 15°, the top line did seem a fraction open even though the leading edge of the face was square. A lot of better players like to see an slightly open alignment address so that may suit you or not.

When you went above the standard loft from +1° through to +2°, even though the face was technically closed, visually it did seem to sit pretty straight, which is what I preferred.

Performance wise, the ball flight did change with the loft, but thankfully not too dramatically. On the 3-wood, the 14° setting was harder to get going as it was low with a fade, whereas the 15° was a lovely penetrating trajectory. The higher lofts did give some more elevation without ballooning and I prefered these settings myself, so if you want a 16 degree loft I would adjust up from 15° head rather than down from 17°.

The feel was good and the sound was maybe a little on the hollow side when it could have sounded a bit more powerful. The forgiveness was pretty good for the size of the head and better players will find the combination of forgiveness and playability right up their street.

The other feature of the Multi Fit System is the changable weights in the sole. Many clubs have a changeable weight in the sole, but unfortunately not so many actually give you a nice pouch with three weights of 3, 7 and 11 grams, a wrench and encourage you to use them. The 7 gram weight is already in the club as standard and you can go up and down from there.

To the average golfer changing weights will make a noticeable difference to the feel of the club as you swing it and it is good fun playing around with them. The weights will also affect club head speed and trajectory and to optimise these it is best to go to a Wilson fitter or other specialised professional with a flight monitor to get the numbers to back up your preferred feel.

The Wilson FG Tour M3 fairway comes with the dark grey Aldila Phenom shaft as standard and compliments the looks of the club well. The Phenom is light at 65 grams, but is stable and idealy suited for fairway woods.

Overall the Wilson FG Tour M3 fairway is a very solid club that delivers well on its promises. It may not have the pizzazz of some other models and the hosel design could be sleeker, but the adjustability options with the sole weights make it worthy of consideration.